When students kept dancing close enough for their hips to kiss at Bend High School's Sadie Hawkins dance Saturday night, fed-up school administrators shut the dance down.

It was about 10 p.m. The room was dark, the music pounding. And some of the students were dancing dirty.

"Quite honestly it's like having sex with your clothes on," said Mary McDermott, a teacher and the school's activities director, describing the style of dancing.

The school ended the dance an hour early after giving what they believe was fair warning to the hundreds of students Saturday night. The signs on the doors said it plainly: No freak dancing and no grinding. School officials reminded students about the rules in an announcement during the dance.

What many students don't understand, they said Monday, is what made that night or that dance any different.

In their experience, bodies entwine and chests meet when teens get footloose on the dance floor.

"There's no other way to dance besides being up against the other person," said Mat Baker, 17, a senior. "It's just the way people dance these days."

Students were angry, Baker said, particularly since many paid up to $10 to come to the dance, only to get kicked out. The way he sees it, the teenagers were doing the same kind of things they see in movies.

"There were no clothes coming off or anything," Baker said.

But the school had heard enough complaints from parents and the community about what they term inappropriate dancing, McDermott said. Administrators decided to draw the line on some kinds of dancing — even if many students danced in a perfectly acceptable way.

"At some point you have to take a stand and send a message to the kids and say this is not OK," said Marshall Jackson, an assistant principal.

In the last several years, he said, Jackson has seen dancing go "over the edge" in its sexual nature — whether students intend it to be that way or not. Some parents who have glimpsed the behavior have told the school they are shocked, school officials say.

This doesn't appear to be something unique to Bend High. Last week, activities directors from Bend-La Pine high schools discussed what to do about the sexually charged dancing style showing up at school dances.

And Jackson says it's not only adults who are uncomfortable with what's going on.

"We have heard from some kids they don't like it," he said.

Some students thanked him Monday for putting a halt to the dance, Jackson said.

In the week before the dance, the school had warned students over the public announcements that freak dancing or grinding would not be permitted.

Freak dancing, a term many students said was new to them, is used by school administrators to describe dancing that is sexual in nature.

At the dance itself, Jackson announced that inappropriate dancing wouldn't be tolerated, people doing it would be asked to leave and that the dance would be shut down if the inappropriate dancing continued.

By the end of the night but before the dance was shut down, about 10 to 15 couples had been asked to leave, Jackson said.

"There were some people who were really gross, really nasty, who they should have kicked out, and they did," said Christina Case, 17, a junior. "You couldn't put a toothpick between them."

The irony of it all, some students said, was that this dance was actually more "PG" than other dances.

"At Bermuda Bash you're pretty much half-naked and at this you're fully clothed," Case said, referring to a January dance at which some students wear bikini tops.

New rules about what students can and can't do might keep people away from dances, said Katy Sieberts, 15, a sophomore.

"I think the parents overreacted," she said. "I think the parents think it's a lot worse than it is."

McDermott, the activities director, who has been at Bend High for 19 years, said she's seen dancing change in the last four to five years. MTV and certain movies have set the tone, and students believe the things they see are acceptable to imitate, she said.

Yet sexuality isn't absent from the schools. The school runs a fund-raiser for the Ronald McDonald House in which male student contestants compete for Mr. BSH (Bend Senior High). In this year's advertisement, shirtless male teenagers pose as pirates.

McDermott agreed that students might be getting mixed messages. But when it comes to inappropriate dancing, it doesn't matter what students are wearing.

"When they are purposely rubbing their body parts together, that's where we have to draw the line," she said. "Because it's not acceptable."

Well, ya got trouble, my friend
Right here, I say trouble right here in River City...er Bend
Oh, ya got lots and lots o' trouble
I'm thinkin' of the kids in the knickerbockers shirttails,
Young ones peekin' in the dance hall window after school
Ya got trouble, folks, right here in Bend
With a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'D' and that
Stands for 'dancing'

Now I know all you folks are the right kind of parents
I'm gonna be perfectly frank
Would you like to know what kind of conversation goes on
While they're loafin' around that hall
They'll be tryin' out Bevo, tryin' out Cubebs,
Tryin' out tailor-mades like cigarette fiends
And braggin' all about how they're gonna cover up
A tell-tale breath with Sen-Sen
Now one fine night they leave the pool hall
Headin' for the dance at the Armory
Libertine men and scarlet women and ragtime
Shameless music that'll grab your son, your daughter
Into the arms of a jungle animal instinct- massteria!
Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground, trouble!

Umm. Just for the record, "freak" dancing, as in the dance, has been around twenty-five years at least. No. More. When did Le Freak by Chic come out? That song documented a dance that was popular at the time, and VERY sexual in nature.

The school administrators were, dare I say it? Clueless if they thought they could schedule a dance for teens and not have grinding happen. Too much grinding? Maybe. But definitely to be expected. Hmm. They should have done what the harpies who ran my high school did. Run around with their rulers to make sure everyone was the appropriate distance apart. I kid you not.

Umm. Just for the record, "freak" dancing, as in the dance, has been around twenty-five years at least. No. More. When did Le Freak by Chic come out? That song documented a dance that was popular at the time, and VERY sexual in nature.

The school administrators were, dare I say it? Clueless if they thought they could schedule a dance for teens and not have grinding happen. Too much grinding? Maybe. But definitely to be expected. Hmm. They should have done what the harpies who ran my high school did. Run around with their rulers to make sure everyone was the appropriate distance apart. I kid you not.

Click to expand...

Le Freak! C'est chic!

Omigodiremember! I'd forgotten that song! It was fairly big around 1978, wasn't it?

I remember the song Le Freak being out, but, to be honest, I don't remember the exact year. I'll have to google.

And yes. I went to a fairly prestigious all girls school, and the administrators were not about to have any hint of scandal at their dances. Rulers WERE in evidence. The rulers, and the thirty five parent volunteer chaperones, made it unlikely that anything even remotely sexual would ever happen at a GHS dance. LOL. Those were the days. Nostalgia day for me, too.

Eee, when I were a lad at school dances we had a wear an apron 18 inches wide and down to our knees and made of oak an inch thick. And we had to wear oven gloves if we were to dance in an embrace.
Ay we used to come home with bruised kness

But that's nothing; in me father's day at the school dances girls and boys were not allowed to dance in the same room

Eee, when I were a lad at school dances we had a wear an apron 18 inches wide and down to our knees and made of oak an inch thick. And we had to wear oven gloves if we were to dance in an embrace.
Ay we used to come home with bruised kness

But that's nothing; in me father's day at the school dances girls and boys were not allowed to dance in the same room

Click to expand...

In our day, they used to hand out hair shirts at dances--and we would be flogged every time we did an underarm turn. Twice for a hammerlock.

Eee, when I were a lad at school dances we had a wear an apron 18 inches wide and down to our knees and made of oak an inch thick. And we had to wear oven gloves if we were to dance in an embrace.
Ay we used to come home with bruised kness

But that's nothing; in me father's day at the school dances girls and boys were not allowed to dance in the same room

Click to expand...

In our day, they used to hand out hair shirts at dances--and we would be flogged every time we did an underarm turn. Twice for a hammerlock.

Click to expand...

Yet, in our day.. if u danced with a lady .. u had to marry her..
If u had to grind.. u marry first .. then grind away..

Well, ya got trouble, my friend
Right here, I say trouble right here in River City...er Bend
Oh, ya got lots and lots o' trouble
I'm thinkin' of the kids in the knickerbockers shirttails,
Young ones peekin' in the dance hall window after school
Ya got trouble, folks, right here in Bend
With a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'D' and that
Stands for 'dancing'

Now I know all you folks are the right kind of parents
I'm gonna be perfectly frank
Would you like to know what kind of conversation goes on
While they're loafin' around that hall
They'll be tryin' out Bevo, tryin' out Cubebs,
Tryin' out tailor-mades like cigarette fiends
And braggin' all about how they're gonna cover up
A tell-tale breath with Sen-Sen
Now one fine night they leave the pool hall
Headin' for the dance at the Armory
Libertine men and scarlet women and ragtime
Shameless music that'll grab your son, your daughter
Into the arms of a jungle animal instinct- massteria!
Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground, trouble!

actually, no, they dont. i was at a quinceneria (sp?) last night watched a couple of 15 year old kids who were grinding to a song right in front of a lady old enough to be their grandmother... we didn't do this kinda stuff (in public, anyway) in ohio back in the 70's!